For information leaded fuel has not been available since about 2000. I don't even remember when exactly. In France it is still sold as so many cars survived.
Is that actually
leaded fuel or a lead substitute? I thought the withdrawal of leaded a few years ago was under some EU directive (although at least France has the good sense to ignore such things a lot of the time!).
We have LRP on sale in Britain -- Lead Replacement Petrol, which is still used by a lot of people with cars made prior to about 1986 or thereabouts, which I think is when all new cars had to be capable on running on unleaded.
A lot of people with classic or vintage cars prefer to fill up with unleaded and use a separate additive though.
More on-topic, it's quite interesting to see all the pros and cons put forward for different types of heating over the years. I was browsing some magazines here from the 1963/64 period the other evening.
The advertisments for electrical heating emphasize the cleanness of electricity, the minimal maintenance requuired, and the ease of use, along with comments about efficiency (referring to the fact that with gas or oil etc. some of the heat is wasted out of the flue).
Ads for gas make a big point of how much cheaper it was compared to the equivalent energy from electricity at the time, and how much less labor is required than for a solid fuel system.
Proponents of solid-fuel systems all made a big point of it being the cheapest overall to run, and tried to counter the more intense labor issue with automatic hopper feed systems etc. which require only a couple of minutes per day to load up.
Oil-fired heating has become very common in this country in places which have no gas suppyl, but with the price of heating oil having doubled in a relatively short space of time, a lot of people are now finding it to be less attractive.
[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-16-2006).]
